Jim Harbaugh appeared on the “Pardon My Take” podcast. Harbaugh invoked his engaging side for the PMT hosts, and here are some highlights.
• Harbaugh, on the meaning of grit, after he’d been called gritty: “First of all, thank you. That’s a very nice compliment, for somebody to be described as having grit, having some gravel in the gut. That’s a very good thing, and I appreciate it.
“I told one of our players, Ben Mason, who is a freshman linebacker … he early enrolled, went through spring practice. I’ve never seen anybody go forward and hit somebody better. I think this guy was just made to be a fullback.
“That would be a great way to be described. That’s grit. Going forward and hitting somebody better than anybody I’ve ever seen. I’d like to be described that way. You could put that on somebody’s gravestone.”
• On building grit: “Absolutely, you can improve and become better at toughness. It’s a talent, but it can be acquired, too. I think of it like building a callus. It’s like the human body. What a tremendous organism.
“It actually craves contact. It likes contact. It craves it, as opposed to a car. If you backed into a brick wall, that would cause at least $2,000 worth of damage. It doesn’t have the ability to repair itself or callus over, but the human body does.
“Much like conditioning can be improved, so can that callus of toughness and grit also be acquired or improved. If you’ve got a blister, it’s soft, it’s [puss-filled], it’s got fluid in it, it’s going to break. The great thing about it, when it does break, it will callus over even stronger and harder and better. And now it’s gritty.”
• On finding players who love football: “People are going to be better at things they love. You’re going to work harder at it. Some people need the sport of football. I would put myself in that category.
“Some people like and need ice cream. They want to eat it every day. I look at football like that. I need it.”
• On identifying football players: “You know it when you see it. You can see it day after day. I always think of it like, you’ve really got to tell the truth when you get on the football field. Do you have talent? Have you put in the effort? Are you stronger, are you faster, or are you not?
“It happens out on the football field, almost like a truth serum. There’s no way to bullcrap your way around it. You can’t send an email [and say], ‘I’m really good.’ Eventually, you’ve got to get out there on the football field and you see what the fruit is.
“In the Bible, you can tell a good tree because it bears good fruit. A bad tree bears bad fruit. By your fruit you will be known. By your talent, by your effort in football you shall be known.”
• On the quote, “Ain’t hard being a football player if you’re a football player”: “That comes from many years of listening to people whine or complain about how tough things are, and this is so hard, this is so rough, practices are so long, and that kind of thing.
“But if you’re a football player, you crave the contact. You like going to bed at night, having the head hit the pillow, and your muscles are sore. They ache. You’ve sweated, you’re exhausted. As soon as your head hits the pillow and you close your eyes, you’re asleep. You really like that.
“So yeah, it ain’t hard being a football player if you’re a football player.”
• On enjoying recruiting: “It’s an amazing process, just to go all across the country. You meet really good people. It makes you feel good that there are genuine, down-to-earth, good people. They have one main commonality — they want the best for their son.
“You’re welcomed into a home — picture this — and you take your shoes off, and they say, ‘Coach, sit here. My wife has prepared …’ Then you eat a meal that’s maybe in the top five or 10 you’ve ever eaten in your life.
“You get to know a family and they get to know you. You really become like part of the family. When it really works the best, you’re in a circle that is a family, and it’s a responsibility I take very seriously, but it doesn’t seem like working.
“You’re connecting, and you’re striving to be somebody’s best friend they’ve ever had, professionally. So you’ve got to get to know them. It’s tough to be somebody’s best friend they’ve ever had professionally if you don’t get to know them and they don’t get to know you.
“It’s a wonderful process, a real honor to be somebody that somebody trusts enough to drop their most prized possession that they have in the world … off at your doorstep, and they expect you to return the same good, quality person that they drop off.
“It’s a huge responsibility, but it’s a tremendous honor, that somebody would trust you to be in that role.”
• On staying overnight at a recruit’s home: “The rules are set up that a player can have an in-home visit one time, and only in the months of January or December. So instead of being two hours, let’s make it 24 hours.
“Let’s get to know [each other], let you kick the tires. What’s somebody really like? I snore. I used to snore. Now I’ve got a sleep machine, so I don’t snore as much.
“You stay up a little bit. You talk, you tell stories, you laugh, and you get to know everybody else in the family. It’s amazing. Sometimes the coach comes over. There’s an uncle, sometimes it’s the cousins. I’ve had some amazing times. You pop a little popcorn and watch some highlights.
“[Freshman] Donovan Jeter, we watched an entire playoff game. That was awesome. You get to hear what he was being coached. Now I understand what kind of player he is, things he needs to improve on, things that he does well.
“Then you sit down and have a great dinner. You wake up, get breakfast, you go to school, now you meet some of the teachers and counselors … I went to school with Quinn Nordin…
“Education is wasted on the young. It’s great to go back to class now.”
• On knowing what size shoes the Pope would wear: “My wife researched that. I don’t know how she found it, but she did find it. She found our holy father is a nine or a nine-and-a-half, I can’t remember which — and he also wears orthodics.
“He is an amazing, amazing person. Being in his presence … it was life-changing. Beautiful face, smile. Beautiful eyes. But a burden, too. You could tell. He’s got pain. If Jesus were human, this is what he would look like. That was the experience that I felt.
“Thank goodness for my wife, Sarah. She was able to talk. After I handed Pope Francis the helmet and the shoes, I really became like one of those marble statues…
“There’s a burden there — poverty, injustice, wars — and you could really see that in his eyes. He said to Sarah, ‘Pray for me.’ Through his words and through his eyes, there was such a goodness and such a holiness that was right there.”
• On putting himself on the depth chart if he still had eligibility: “Yeah. I’ve been playing. I play in dreams. I don’t ever have any coaching dreams, but I have football dream still, and I play…
“It’s young me, but older me face. Sometimes I’m right back in young me, too. It’s a dream, so you don’t have a whole lot of control over it. But I’m right in there playing, not coaching. I love those football dreams…
“It’s usually fourth quarter. Maybe we’ve just gotten within seven, or within three. Something might have gone bad in the previous series, but I’m usually trotting out and when the dream ends, I’m out there for the final series. I haven’t had one where it actually finishes.”
• On learning to love football: “I’ve been in love with football since the third day of practice, 1973. Even the third day, I was thinking, hey, do I really need this? I’m a good basketball player. I’m an outstanding shortstop and pitcher.
“I had to tackle the biggest, toughest guy on the team. Your five o’clock shadow? Very similar. He weighed about 130 pounds, and I was like 95. I had to tackle him. Coach said you’ve got to tackle him…
“I got run over, but I was still able to make the tackle. From that day on, I learned that A, if I’m scared of something, we’ve got to turn fear into aggression. That was one good lesson that worked.
“The other thing was, I love football. I love football. I’ve got to do this every day. I got a little grittier.”
• On what he’d be doing if sports were never invented: “Honestly, I knew from the very youngest age that I was going to play football as long as I could, then coach, then die. I really haven’t thought about deviation from that plan.”
Here is the podcast in its entirety.
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